Those
lyrics from Ray Stevens' "Come to the USA" YouTube video illustrate
the stark difference in how some countries view people who sneak across their
borders, compared to the USA.

The US now
has 11-to-20 million immigrants that illegally crossed our borders or
over-stayed their visas, and the US Congress, in an attempt to reward those
illegal immigrants, is now debating various measures under the guise of
"immigration reform" which could easily be even more destructive and
costly than the Affordable Care Act.

There is
little agreement among our Senators and Representatives about what to do. Ideas
being floated range from plain amnesty to plans to convert illegals to legal
status and create a path to citizenship, and most pay a bit of lip service to
securing the borders. Since they take such a friendly approach to people who
are here illegally, these measures are viewed as a form of amnesty, and amnesty
failed miserably in 1986. Any act that gives illegals an advantage over the 4
million people waiting in line who entered legally isn’t fair.

An
exhaustive study by the Heritage Foundation has found that after amnesty,
current illegal immigrants would receive $9.4 trillion in government benefits
and services but pay only about $3 trillion in taxes over their lifetimes,
leaving a deficit of $6.3 trillion that would be paid for by another big
increase in government debt or by raising taxes on those who still pay taxes.

Further,
some of the people who have entered illegally are criminals, and perhaps a few
terrorists in the mix, and we have to continue rooting out the bad among those millions
and secure the border to prevent others like them from sneaking in.

Our
government has acted stupidly and negligently over the years allowing national
security to suffer by failing to secure the borders. That has to stop now,
before any measure to legalize illegals proceeds.

More
Inconvenient Truth

Dr.
Roy Spencer has serious climate credentials dating back to 1981 that involve
research at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, and award-winning climate
studies for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. His research has been entirely
supported by the U.S. government through NASA, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, and the Department of Energy.

He has
produced a graph based upon 73 separate climate change prediction models that
shows the full high/low range of those predictions of increasing global
temperatures from 1979 through 2024, as well as the median prediction of those
models. These datasets show predictions of global temperatures rising as much
as 2 degrees Celsius (C) over that period, and about 1.5 degrees C by 2012.

These
predictions shouldn’t surprise anyone; they are the similar to the dozens,
hundreds or thousands of news stories of impending global catastrophe if
drastic steps are not taken immediately to stop man’s upward pressure on global
temperatures. And certainly if these models are accurate and we refuse to take
steps to control greenhouse gas emissions, we will be negligent.

“And
now,” as the great commentator Paul Harvey used to say, “for the rest of the
story.”

Dr.
Spencer uses the same graph to show the results of actual temperature
observations from balloons and satellites from 1979 through 2012. These observations
use actual measurements of temperatures that occasionally show cooling periods
or static results, but most of which over the last decade show increases in
temperature.

Most
important, however, is that even in the years from 2003 through 2012 when the
warming trend has been the most consistent, the actual rise in temperature is
only .2 degrees C, well below the predicted level of .6 to .8 degrees, and a
mere fraction of the highest of the range of predicted increases of 1.3 to 1.5
degrees C.

In explaining
this dramatic difference between prediction and reality, Dr. Spencer notes that
“to many politicians and the public, the term [global warming] carries the
implication that mankind is responsible for that warming. … [M]y group’s
government-funded research … suggests global warming is mostly natural, and
that the climate system is quite insensitive to humanity’s greenhouse gas
emissions and aerosol pollution.”

He
goes on to say that, “Believe it or not, very little research has ever been
funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming … it has simply been assumed
that global warming is manmade.”

Update February 9, 2009: The worldwide financial crisis has made it harder on banks and credit card companies are facing rising delinquency...

Faultline USA Disclaimer

Faultline USA is a private collaborative political blog written by a number of individual contributors. The blog is not published for profit and does not accept any form of advertising, sponsorship, or paid insertions. . . . Continue Here